With the new Bloodmoon event on its way, the biggest talk is about the new Celestial power set. It’s a big one with lots of powers, and since they’re up on the public test shard, we’re gonna have to take a look prior to their live release. To facilitate this test, yours truly, the honorable Skip Cocoa, has found and donned an ancient, divine artifact to temporarily become The Radiant Skip Cocoa! Behold!

Sexiness has never known such a righteous master. It’s a near shame to be going back to my less divine but still sexy self on the live servers. Now, to the matter at hand.

The Celestial power set is, through and through, a support set. Unlike its competitors, Sorcery and Telepathy, it does this almost exclusively through healing. If there’s a green bar, a Celestial character is designed to empty it or fill it, as it desires. It doesn’t have the holds, auras and summons of its sisters and so it’s actually fairly active, as support goes. You’ll find yourself constantly switching between healing and dealing damage. What, you wanted to just heal? Oh no, you’ve been playing those other MMO games, haven’t you. No, Champions Online has no need for your single mindedness. As a pure and unwavering Celestial-based character, your job will be to both fill and empty green bars. And this baby is built to suit that need. Most powers share a unique duality in that they work differently depending on if you target enemies or allies. Target an enemy, and you’ll hurt, mame, debuff, or otherwise inconvenience said lackey. Target an ally, and you’ll heal and buff your friend, just like any good support character should. Now, on to the business of powers.

The Celestial Powers

Radiance (Energy Builder) – Like the friendly parenthetic text says, this is your energy builder. Some EBs are melee. They hit people up close and generate blueness quite quickly. Some EBs have range and nice bonus effects both innately and through advantage points. This EB flirts with column B, being a quick firing and decently effective builder with an interesting side game. If you are targeting an ally, your shots will instead heal them. Now, this isn’t exactly a beastly mega-heal. In fact, I’m going to take a few seconds to laugh whole heartedly at everyone on the CO forums who even speculated that this ability has any potential to make a person a healer. Ha ha ha. No, if this were the only healing ability you ever took as a character, you’ve probably wasted your EB slot. At low levels, the heals barely break 10 HP, and at upper levels, you’re still looking at under 50 HP per pop. It’s not going to even remotely keep up with the damage any individual is taking, and isn’t even going to keep up with the rate of abilities like Regeneration. Gobs of Presence will help, but it’ll never be made for great things.

“Worthless”, the forum babies would cry! Well, not quite. While you are (pathetically) healing said ally, you are gaining energy (only when they’re actually hurt). A few shots will mitigate a little damage and give you energy. You can then use that energy to heal that individual with a real healing ability without the time spent targeting. The biggest advantage is that exact convenience.

The ability also lets you target yourself, though no energy comes of this, making the act an exercise in futility. In fact, it’s worth noting that this feature is of detriment to some. If you use certain control setups that let you play “shooter style” and aim at enemies that you don’t actually target (like certain honorable blogging heroes who shall remain uncredited), this ability will thwart your playstyle (oh how it thwarts). Without a designated target, the ability will spam weak, non-energy-building heals on yourself, wasting the effort you spent applying force to a button.

Advantage: Convergence – Continuing in the general “novel but not necessarily useful” theme, Convergence grants you a 20% chance of bouncing your EB shots at a nearby target. If you were healing, it will pick an enemy and deal damage. If you were damaging, it’ll find an ally and heal it. It’s pretty well determined to do exactly the opposite of what little you were trying to accomplish. Remember that energy builders do damage (and in this case, healing) somewhere in the area of nothing. Add in that the stray shots generate no extra energy, and you have a two advantage points recipe for bottled water. Cuz, what what? You spent two dollars on something that comes out of a tap? Convergence was made with your consumerism in mind. Next!

Rebuke (Tier 0) – As T0 abilities go, Rebuke is no lame duck. It’s your basic ranged caster “I charge up for boomz!” fare, and does that Celestial “heal when I target people I sort of like” thing on the side. I’d dare say there are some abilities it actually out performs, even not considering the heal, and so it’ll be appealing to anyone willing to plop down a bit of Presence boosting gear in its name. It’s not going to save you while soloing when you pull that army of 7+ henchmen with no means to protect yourself, nor is it going to top the damage game, but it wins at efficiency. If ever you need a reasonable pop of damage or healing for not a lot of energy, it’s ready and waiting to please.

Advantage: Admonish – This adds a stun to all weakling enemies surrounding your target, be they healed or harmed. At least that’s what the description says. Try as I might, I just couldn’t make it do it. Not once. And I was using real henchmen, not those pansy training dummies. No, you all are worth more to me than that. There are those that I watched make it work, but “sometimes” just isn’t good enough. Luckily, Skip Cocoa is trained in the honorable art of the /bug, and hopefully the powers that be are aware and will have this handy sounding ability ready and clean when it goes live for the masses.

Illumination (Tier 1) – This is the premiere buff for Celestial beings. Because, well, it is the only traditional buff as we know it from other games ever. And that would make it great, if it worked. On PTS, as of this writing, it is bugged in ways inconceivable by the human brain. So, we’ll be looking at it more conceptually than at its current state.

As a buff for your allies, Illumination grants a 30 minute buff to any friendly target that gives them a small heal over time whenever they are attacked. As a debuff on enemies, it gives a 5 minute effect that grants anyone attacking them that same heal. The healing isn’t exactly stellar (even on the rare occasion I was able to actually trigger it), but as the one and only 30 minute drive-by-buff in the game right now, it has that lovely “better than nothing” brand on it that means you just can’t complain, no matter how lack luster it may be. In fact, it’s a downright infection, as you can’t walk anywhere in PTS without someone dropping an Illumination on you eventually. Illumination has a friend further down, so don’t forget about it just yet.

Advantage: Brilliance – Brilliance changes the ability entirely. Instead of a targeted buff, it becomes an PBAoE toggle. Every 10 seconds it is active, it’ll trim off a few points off your endurance bar and apply a short Illumination buff to one ally, one enemy, and you (again, you know, when it gets around to working). It’s important to note that a non-advantaged Illumination can’t currently be placed on the caster (see also: you) and so this would be the only means shy of bringing a second Celly to the party to benefit from your own ability. Again, this is all just theory class. You get hands on when they bug fix it. /bug to you!

Celestial Conduit (Tier 1) – CC is the endurance bar equivalent to a gas guzzling SUV. As a maintained ability costing 27 points per second, regular people will find they can easily chew through a full bar in just a few ticks. Like its predecessors, it heals allies and harms anything with red over its head. The difference is that if the target has the Illumination buff/debuff (told you it was coming back), it will chain off to other similar creatures down the line. That is to say it’ll heal more allies if it was already healing and harm more baddies if it was attacking. The trigger rate isn’t exactly reliable, bouncing about and collapsing like a hyper active child with a sugar high, so bring some energy management to get the most out of it.

Advantage: Serenity – I deserve a metal for testing this ability. Skip Cocoa needs more friends. This advantage will fill up a bit of your blue bar if you channel it at someone under the effect of Mend. Mend is the healing trigger on Illumination, if you were curious. Can you plan around this? In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooo. And yet, as sporadic as your chances are of ever seeing a benefit from this, the mortgage worthy cost on Celestial Conduit means you might just take any offer you can find at reducing its cost, however random and meek it may be.

Of course, those are all the things I would’ve said had I not actually tested it. No, it seems Serenity actually gains a bonus off the regular old Illumination buff, and it gains a lot. One person I tested with (thank you @Bron, you are a saint. Sorry I DC’d on you. Internet is flakey when your apartment building doubles as an orbital weapons platform) was able to maintain a constant stream of heals with this, despite the high cost. Switch to a Sentinel build role (you are support, you were already there, right?), raise some Recovery and the energy gain was insane. It’s good to be a support character.

Conviction (Tier 1) – What is Convicition? HP. It is HP three ways to Sunday. At the surface, it offers +15% maximum HP for 20 seconds (non-stacking). Just under that, it is a self heal, and a respectable one, at that. The 6 second cooldown keeps it from being a spammable life saver above all other heals, but if you’re popping it off every few seconds to keep your HP high and full, it will serve alright. It’s also designed to offer up some ammo for the next ability we’ll cover.

Advantage: Reverence - Adds a small AoE heal to the power. And, yeah, it’s pretty small. Of course, the plain Rank 2 and 3 bonuses only improve the self healing, not the max HP buff, so it’s a matter of personal preference in the end.

Iniquity (Tier 1) – Give your life for your team mates. No, literally. Iniquity sacrifices a huge chunk of your health and gives it to your target, and has no qualms chopping you up even when your target isn’t someone you can heal (like your newly chopped up self). So, why would you ever do this? Because it’s probably the only ability in the game that will let you mash the button and churn out massive amounts of health for someone who would otherwise be outright doomed. No other heal matches it in sheer power, limited only to your own health. This ability is reason #1 the game suggests you take Constitution as a main characteristic focus. The more health you have, the more health you have to give.

Advantage: Justice – This turns Iniquity into a cone. For each extra ally up to the max friend number 5, the ability will be 10% less effective. Only 10%?! Hot dog! If you can give up 500 health and give 450 to two friends, that’s a 400 HP net gain. Buff your Presence and Constitution, take Justice, and you have the most potent heal ever conceived. That is unless something is attacking you. Which they no doubt will do the moment they see you throwing out numbers like that. Hold block for great justice!

Imbue (Tier 1) – Imbue lets you pound out a crit like nobody’s business. With a reasonably high energy cost and a 30 second recharge, it had better be good. The result is that your next attack or heal is a guaranteed crit and the severity of which is based on your good old Constitution instead of the usual Ego. Oh, the tanks are going to love this one! I’m hearing and seeing some word that damage over time effects break the ability before it can be useful. Hopefully that’ll be changed come live.

Advantage: Illusive – The Imbued ability will also produce less threat, making it less likely to draw the ire of every enemy in a 40 mile radius. If the problems with healing threat aren’t fixed by live, this will probably not be enough to save your feathered angel hide, sadly. If you took this ability as a damage absorbing brick, you may just look at this advantage and laugh.

Palliate (Tier 2) – Palliate is an amazing emergency heal. Where as most heals offer a set amount, Palliate gives health based on a percentage. What’s this, you took Constitution as a characteristic focus like a good little Celestial? That’s extra healing! With a pretty low energy cost for its results, of which are health near and past the 30% mark, this heal can total up for a lot. You’re looking at a 2ish minute cooldown, but it’s a fair price for a flick this flashy. It also offers the target a small boost to their Presence characteristic, though it’s a spit in the bucket by comparison. Used on yourself, it might eek out a little extra healing, should you still need it, or net the brick you just healed a bit of extra threat, but it’s not a reason to use the ability nor worth caring about in any capacity. Even with the cooldown, I smell an eventual nerf coming Palliate’s way. It’s just that good.

Advantage: Absolve – This’ll get the enemy off your target quick with a burst of stealth and threat dumping on par with that of a smoke bomb. It sort of kills the “save the tank” functionality, but chances are most anyone you would be tossing this out to save never wanted to be attacked in the first place, so it’ll get them back into the game at the speed of F-1. Pop it on yourself while soloing to catch your breath and escape, or in a group to brush off all of those enemies who thought your unparalleled healing was an insult to their manhood. Palliate might just be “too good”, and this advantage nudges it ever the further.

Redemption (Tier 2) – Much the same as similar abilities in Sorcery and Gadgeteering, Redemption raises a defeated ally and nothing else. It can’t be used in battle and it does nothing to enemies, unlike most of those other abilities. Given that the penalty for failure in this game is you have to run/fly/swing/jump/etc back to where you fell down from a nearby respawn point, the necessity for an ability like this is questionable. But, here it is!

Advantage: Salvation - Take a highly situational ability of questionable value and make it work on everyone around you! There may come a time when you are knee deep in fallen team mates, far far from a respawn point, and whatever had taken them out is no longer trying to flay you as well. And on that day, you can laugh at all who called you mad for taking Salvation. And on that day, I will humbly eat my bandana.

Seraphim (Tier 2) – Oh my Grond, we gots us a slotted passive y’all! What be it, what be it? It’s something of an offensive/support mix, though it goes in the support slot. This is a blessing, because you probably want to be in the Sentinel build for all of that juicy energy regeneration. It offers bonus power to both healing and dimensional damage, more than offsetting the damage lost by your support stance and making you better at everything else you do. It also offers up a small, gradual heal to any ally near you. It’s not much, but it requires no effort on your part, so just take what you get.

It seems to cause a bit of fuss in that Constitution improves the healing bonus while Presence improves the damage bonus. Now, before we groan at all, remember that most scaling is laughable. The scaling isn’t much better here, so don’t lose it. For starters, Presence already boosts healing, and making the slotted ability do that is what we like to call “double dipping”. It becomes exponentially improved at one thing by camping just one characteristic. Celestial is not a healing power set, exclusively. It’s a healing and damaging set, existing in a dual, flip-flop nature that works best being on the ball and doing both. The fact that you can improve your Presence and get both healing improvement (because that’s what it does normally) and a damage bonus (from the slot) is a testament to this duality and improves your versatility greatly.

Advantage: Balance – This adds a damage component to the aura effect, gradually harming every enemy nearby. It’s very similar to Fiery form in that respect, which wasn’t putting out amazing damage either. It’s not a power gaming addition to your arsenal, especially if you’re staying out of melee range (you probably are), but its a cool concept, so take or leave.

Expulse (Tier 2) – Very similar to Force Eruption, Expulse blasts enemies nearby you and knocks them back.  Compared to FE, Expulse costs more, has shorter range, and has to be fully charge, but has the benefit of doing near twice the damage.

Advantage: Impose – A few seconds after sending your enemy flying through the air, Impose will apply a 16 second movement reduction snare on them.  If it actually rooted them, that’d be really nice.  Movement reduction doesn’t really get my halo up.

Ascension (Tier 3) – Ascension is an Active Defense.  It isn’t actually very defensive, but that means it shares a little 30 second side-cooldown that keeps people from collecting all of the Active Defenses and spamming them in sequence.  If there were ever a power to spam, this baby would be it.  Sadly, you’ll have to settle for a dozen seconds of pure honor and awesome.  Your damage goes way up, your healing power goes way up, and you can fly at a speed that puts Rank 3 travel powers to shame, even if you don’t actually have a flight travel power.  I want it just to fire it off as a Nitro boost while traveling from point A to point B to get me there faster!

Advantage: Judgement - Ascension will also consume all of the Illumination buffs and debuffs around you, exchanging them for heals and damage as appropriate.  Given that you’re popping Ascension off to grant you massive healing and damage, this little pop of numbers isn’t really going to play up by comparison.  But, if you just can’t get enough of the Illumination, I guess I’ve seen worse.

Purge (Tier 3) – Purge doesn’t exist.  Not on PTS right now.  I looked.  Not there.  Got purged.  Why is it here?  It’s on the preview page, so someone thought it was going somewhere.  It’s supposed to strip buffs, debuffs, travel powers, DoTs and other such powers off your target.  Bad things off good people and vice versa.  At least that’s what it says.  Don’t look at me like that, I’m not psychic.

Advantage: Deliverance – Makes Purge help break holds off friendly targets too.  Because they saw a status effect it didn’t work on, and now you can remove everything instead of almost everything.

What is a “By the Book” Celestial Going to Offer?

I’ve said it before, but a full-on Celestial without dabbling outside the tree much is going to do two things: heal and hurt. In both departments you are respectable, and you’ll need to be able to adapt and be aware of where your efforts are needed at any given time. It’s an active, twitchy, “need now do now” type of character. This isn’t the traditional fantasy MMO, and if you’re just staring at your allies health bars, waiting to toss heals, you’re wasting a huge chunk of your power.

What Other Power Sets Are Useful to a Celestial?

Just at a glance, I can’t recommend the Shadow power Life Drain near enough. A high Presence with the slotted Seraphim will greatly improve both the damage and healing of the power. It can be a great way to refill your life after passing out a few Iniquities, while dealing extra damage too, which fits the set’s theme to the letter. Just remember that it can’t drain life from the livingly challenged like robots and undead.

Several powers within the Radiant Sorcery set fit Celestial conceptually, and are actually useful as well. Aura of Radiant Protection is an amazing slotted passive that grants amazing defense to you and all of your teammates and scales very noticeably with Presence. It’s also potentially more useful for traveling alone than Seraphim, as healing yourself (or anyone) is infinitely easier when you’re taking less damage. Summoning a fellow angel can also be fun.

Telepathy is your sister set, and far more pure at support than you are. You probably don’t need the healing, but there are some really good holds and status effects up for grabs, and nothing says you can’t cherry pick whatever suits your style to add some subtlety to the C game.

There’s obviously more, and the sky is the limit (not just because you have wings), so whatever concept you might have in mind, give it a go. Don’t let me tell you you’re playing your game wrong.

Fun Ideas to Dabble With

The Dark Angel – You are a benefit to all of your allies. Your support abilities are second to none. However, you are a force to be feared, should you ever fall in battle. You have taken Rebirth from the Supernatural set.  Rank it up and watch as you rampage about with the damage of the gods. It is slightly more work, but you may also consider Fiery Form (which scales its damage bonus with your Presence) with some high-damage fire attacks to produce a mythical Phoenix concept.

The Paladin - You are both brick and healer. You favor a Protector build, due to its large HP pool and threat production. Your Presence serves to empower your healing as well as bolster the threat you produce. Your Constitution improves your ever growing HP Pool. Your favorite heals are Iniquity, Conviction and Palliate. Iniquity allows you to put your massive HP pool to use on others. Conviction and Palliate both offer benefits based upon a percentage of your HP, making them far more effective on you, since a percentage of your health rivals the full health bars of others. Defiance and Invulnerability both make good slotted passives for you, and so you’ll probably want to gear for Strength. It’s way easier to heal yourself when you’re hardly taking damage to begin with. Might as well take some melee attacks while you’re getting the benefit to them. Laser Saber Robo Paladin?

Heavenly Archer – Okay, you don’t really have to take Archery abilities (what, they have some?), but this concept revolves around taking Quarry. You are a blitz build. You go offensive, deal damage quickly and efficiently. Quarry is an ability that reduces the cost of your powers the more you attack and Fair Game is an advantage for Quarry that scales with Constitution and heals you anytime your Quarry dies. Thus, your role is primarily offensive, with the ability to toss heals on occasion. Wear them down, then pop Imbue and throw your biggest attack for a massive crit spike.

ca ca catcy music… fl fl flashy 80′s screen graphics… Scrolling 3D te e e e e ext!!!

DC: Today on Inside Heroics, I will be talking to the one and only Skip Cocoa.  Hello, Skip.

SC: Hello Darrell, it’s a pleasure to be here.

DC: Things have been going well for you, we hear.

SC: Indeed, Darrell.   We’ve just started “the feed” out of the Ceremonial Orbiting Anvil.  Crime fighting is really going well.  I got to try out the new Celestial set.  I couldn’t be happier.

DC: Wonderful, wonderful.  Tell us about “the feed”.

SC:  Well Darrell, it’s the feed.  I broadcast to our website from the Ceremonial Orbiting Anvil, which is a space apartment building I rent a room in.  It’s also a military grade weapons platform.

DC: The government is really trying to find ways around those budget troubles, huh.  Now, I’m going to shift gears on you a moment, Skip, and ask the question that’s been looming over everyone’s head.  It’s the big elephant in the room. It would seem you’ve had some choice words to share about dedicated healers in Champions Online, and it has a few people in a stir.

SC: Well, I don’t really like to talk about it.  It was a long day.  The feed had eaten itself, so I had to start over, and it wasn’t a short one.  I was a bit testy and I may have said things that sounded like people who only heal weren’t necessarily up to par as a hero.

DC: Ouch.  That had to hurt.   And then you went on, yes?

SC: Well, no.  That was it.  Then I was going to go on when you jerked me over here for this interview.  I’m not actually done.  No one has even read those comments yet.

DC: And then you went on to explain that healers should have their babies devoured by acid spitting space spiders.

SC: What?!  No!  I love healers.  I would never say such a thing.

DC: This sort of defensiveness isn’t what we need to create a productive atmosphere, Skip.  Go on.  Explain how you said that healers were a load of fantasy gutter trash played by people with no capacity to play a game with more than two buttons, and that a mass genocide of their kind was too good for them.

SC: What… where do you get this stuff?  I don’t hate healers, Darrell.  I was only explaining, perhaps a bit harshly, that they…

DC: You don’t have to raise your voice, Skip.  Come, let’s try to create some informal dialog between you and those you have offended.

SC: Well, Darrell, not a lot of people know this, but I actually dated a healer for a time.  She was a Paladin.  I wasn’t aware you could cast magical spells in so much metal armor, but she made it work and was good at what she did.

DC: It’s divine magic, Skip.  It doesn’t suffer spell failure checks due to armor.

SC: Of course, how silly of me.  So, as I was saying, she was great.  She cared for other people and I really liked her.  We ultimately parted on good terms.  We were just from very different worlds.  She was called away to someplace called Uld’Frakaraxius.  I offered to come and protect her, but she said they didn’t need any more melee DPS and that I would never make gear check anyways.  But she couldn’t stay behind.  She really needed the helmet possessed by a dragon in the dungeon’s depths in order to progress further.  That was three years ago.  She never came back.

DC: So is she…

SC: No.  Last I had heard, they had killed the dragon 896 times, but it has yet to give up the treasure she seeks.  The drop rate is apparently atrocious.  I miss her, but we’re from different worlds, and that’s just how it has to be.

DC: And so now you hold deep resentment to all healers?

SC: Darrell, let me tell you a story.  Little Timmy was playing his first Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game that all the kids at school were talking about.  At some point, he thought to himself, “Timmy, you’re a nice guy.  You like to help people and maybe you should create a healing character”.  Timmy had many choices of characters with many abilities and all were very appealing.  He ultimately created his healer, gained a few levels, and then joined a group of people trying to make their way through a particularly difficult dungeon.  And much the way he had been fighting off rats, wolves and lowly office interns, he fired off his many colorful spells while his unhealed friends all died.  Timmy was labeled a “n00b” and told never to cast anything that wasn’t a heal ever again.  After doing this enough, Timmy is eventually brain washed into believing he may only cast healing spells.

Timmy then joined Champions Online and made a new healer.  He found some weak healing spells and waited until someone would get hurt, and found that the game mechanics did not support this behavior or build ideology well and went to the forums to QQ.  There, everyone flamed each other and nothing productive happened.  The End.

DC:  And the moral is?

SC: I do believe that there are those who truly and deeply enjoy only the act of filling green bars, but it’s my opinion that a lot of these people are merely trained to think this way.  I think the Celestial set will be a good way for them to explore a more dynamic and varied play experience in which they can do more than stare at bars.  But it’s really not a heal-only centered set, and I fear that those who don’t accepted the mixed role will be extremely frustrated.  I know there is a lot of healer hate on the forums.  I know they fight a hard fight against prejudice. It’s hard for them to fight this battle alone.

DC: Because healers can’t solo worth beans.

SC: Right. I see them fighting a long fight.  Against enemies four levels below them.  And surviving, but not winning.  And I feel bad.  I love you, healers.  Our opinions may vary on your place in this world,but what you do is good.  Whether you dedicate or dabble, your generosity will not be ignored by The Honorable Skip Cocoa.  Be… I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.  Be who you want to be, and I will accept you with open arms.

DC: That looks like all the time we have.  Thank you, Skip, for your time.  And thank you, viewers, for watching this episode of Inside Heroics.

SC: I’m glad to have been here.  Now, Darrell, please put my camera back in my room.  It’s generally frowned upon for the janitorial staff to swipe things from the tenant’s rooms.

DC: Sorry about that, Mr. Cocoa.  It won’t happen again.

My only real complaint, on the whole, is the rooms could use their own trainers, since the loading between rooms slows the process down more than the hallways ever did.

Malkior writes:

I’ve got A question on stats and how they relate to powers.

According to Characteristic Focus powers are based on stats. as it states things like “It will also increase the efficacy of your powers based on your total (stat)”. So I look at my powers, mouse over them, but it does not say what states they are based off of. So I look at my stats, but it does not say what power types the stat effects. So how can I know what effect what and how? thank you.

Sound familiar?  Sure does, because we answered that in our last What the Flip, Skip.

But there’s more.  After the friendly Nogitsune covered the matter, Cale_Knight goes on to say:

Some kind of master list detailing what powers use what stats for scaling would be immensely helpful.

Hark!  Mine ears doth ring.  It certainly would, Cale.  You didn’t state your answer in the form of a question, but we have marvelous parting gifts for you.  Crank up the feed!

Most powers don’t scale.  Well, they do, but in a casual leveling up kind of way that requires about as much personal attention as a fake house plant.  No, we came here for scaling of the characteristic variety.  And there aren’t many, but when you’re trying to get that added edge, they’re worth knowing.

This may not be a complete and full list, though it is to the best of my understanding.  It’s a new game, we’re learning new things all the time, and things do change.  But, I’ll do my best.

Strength

• All melee powers.  This isn’t true scaling.  Rather, strength just gives up to a 20% smacking bonus, just for being a burly dude.  It should be noted that while Ego Blades from Telekinesis are “melee” abilities, they are odd in that they don’t get this bonus.
• Invulnerability (Power Armor) – The initial damage reduction is Strength based.  At lower levels, this is the weaker part of Invulnerability, but at high levels of Strength, it is what let’s Invulnerable sorts be “immune” to quick, weak attacks.
• Enrage (Might) – The damage bonus from stacks of Engraged granted by this skill increase with Strength.  Don’t confuse this with other skills that claim to offer Enraged, as the icon and bonus seem different.  My personal testing seems to show that only Enrage the Might power scales with strength.  Not the others.

Dexterity

• All Stealth granting powers.  This is actually just an innate trait of Dexterity.
• Ice Form (Ice) – The bonus to elemental resistances.  This includes a small resistance to fire and toxic damage, and a large resistance to ice.  Also, Ice Form triggers an effect called Cold Snap on a critical hit, which improves the power of the Shatter Ice power.  While this isn’t exactly Dexterity based scaling, Dexterity does increase your critical hit chance.
• Killer Instinct (Munitions) – Critical hits trigger this ability, which is based on Dexterity.
• Focus of the Unleashed Tempest (Martial Arts: Dual Blade) – Another power that is triggered by critical hits.
• Lightning Reflexes (Martial Arts) – The bonus to both Dodge and Avoidance are Dexterity based.  It’s generally considered necessary to have lots of Dexterity for this power to show its potential.

Constitution

• Invulnerability (Power Armor) – After the flat damage resistance, the damage is reduced by a percentage, influenced by Constitution.  Seems to scale pretty quickly.
• Ego Form (Telekinesis) – The physical damage reduction.  The reduction is small, but since Constitution also increases your hit points, you’re getting two defense increases for the price of one.
• Defiance (Might) – Improves the effect of the stacking damage resistance buffs.  Scales well, making it a much more durable power than people give it credit for.  Defiance advice: Start the fight defensive until the buffs stack up.  Block for great justice!
• Shadow Form (Shadow) – The bonus to paranormal resistances.  This includes a small resistance to ego and magic damage, and a large resistance to dimensional damage.
• Resurgence (Supernatural) – Improves the amount by which Regeneration is bolstered.

Intelligence

• No powers specifically scale with Intelligence, though damaging pets and summons all benefit and achieve extra damage from Intelligence.  Important to note: The healing beam on Field Drones doesn’t scale with Intelligence, but does scale with Presence, being as it counts as healing.

Ego

• Personal Force Field (Force) – The rate at which the field’s power “health” recharges.
• Killer Instinct (Munitions) – Determines the amount of energy this ability returns.
• Ego Form (Telekinesis) – Determines the increase in damage when using Ego Weaponry, Ego Blade Frenzy, Ego Annihilation and Ego Blade Breach.  The double blades that cause this extra damage can also be obtained temporarily using Kinetic Dart with the Incisive Wit advantage.  It essentially triggers the Ego Surge ability.
• Ego Surge (Telekinesis) – Similar to Ego Form, scales certain powers with Ego.
• Telekinesis (Telekinesis) – Determines the size of objects Telekinesis can lift.  The investment necessary is significantly more than Strength requires for similar sized objects.

Presence

• Almost all healing abilities.  Which ones?  Check the boosch.
• Increases the health of all summoned pet.
• Fiery Form (Fire) – The bonus to elemental damage.  This includes fire, ice, and toxic damage.
• Aura of Arcane Clarity/Aura of Primal Majesty/Aura of Ebon Wrath/Aura of Radiant Protection (Sorcery) – All Sorcery auras scale with Presence.

Recovery

• Electric Form (Electricity) – The bonus to energy damage resistances.  This includes a small resistance to sonic and particle damage, and a large resistance to electricity.
• Fiery Form (Fire) – The bonus to elemental resistances.  This includes a small resistance to ice and toxic damage, and a large resistance to fire.
• Regeneration (Supernatural) – Improves the amount of health regenerated, though it takes a lot to show significant results.

Endurance

• Electric Form (Electricity) – The bonus to energy damage.  This includes electricity, energy and particle damage.  This makes it appealing to some Gadgeteering and Power Armor powers as well.
• Personal Force Field (Force) – Improves the amount of damage the force field can absorb.
• Ice Form (Ice) – The bonus to elemental damage.  This includes fire, ice and toxic damage.
• Shadow Form (Shadow) – The bonus to paranormal damage.  This includes dimensional, ego, and magic damage.

BOOSCH!

Heals Improved by Presence

• Bionic Shielding (Gadgeteering) – Scaling looks small compared to the ability’s overall power.  A perfectly fine heal even without Presence.
• Field Drones (Gadgeteering)
• Holdout Pistol (Munitions) – Stim Pack advantage.  Though, it should be noted that even with Presence it is a very small heal.
• Ego Sprites (Telepathy) – Slave Mentality advantage.  Since they were rebalanced, I’m not positive on this anymore.  I can’t seem to reproduce a noticable scaling anymore, but maybe someone can confirm or deny this for me.
• Empathic Healing (Telepathy)
• Psionic Healing (Telepathy)
• Mindful Resources (Telepathy) – Both a healing increase and damage protection increase.
• Lifedrain (Shadow) – Healing done seems completely unrelated to damage dealt, instead simply being based on Presence.  However, the heal won’t take effect on non-living creatures like undead or robots.
• Arcane Vitality (Sorcery)

Heals Not on That List

• Quarry (Archery) – Fair Game advantage offers health for defeating enemies, which is based on Constitution.
• Circle of Primal Dominion (Sorcery) – Seems to be a non-scaling heal.
• Bountiful Chi Resurgance (Martial Arts) – Seems to be a non-scaling heal.

And there you go.  The accuracy here may or may not be 100% right, 100% of the time, but it’s a perpetual work in progress, and it should give you a really good idea what you’re doing with your characteristics when it gets down to the nitty gritty.  If you have anything to add, pop a comment or feedback the feed at “skipcocoa at skipcocoa dot net”.  Ask not what Honorable Skip Cocoa can do for you.  Ask what you can do for Honorable Skip Cocoa to help him doing for you.  Such walls of mindless text.  Such late nights.  That’s how much the feed loves you.

And keep on fighting for honor and awesome.

And you never tried it again, did you?  While slow moving children in Canada go without.  Shame on you.  But not today.  Today, we dodge with great honor and awesome.

Lightning Reflexes is a power in the Martial Arts family of powers.  All 4 of them.  It’s their only defensive slotted passive, shared around like smelly hand-me-down clothes, and it increases both your Dodge and Avoidance, which are both typically on the better side of nothing for your average hero.

Dodge isn’t your usual fantasy momma’s boy chance at not getting hit.  Dodge in CO is a damage reduction mechanic.  A successful dodge reduces the damage from an attack by your Avoidance.  So, if your Avoidance is 50% and you dodge, you’ll take half damage.  That’s a lot less damage.

But Skip, if I’m supposed to be dodging and avoiding all of this damage, why does LR suck the juicy fruit?

Simple, my naive jelly sandwich.  Whatever your dodge percentage is, it’s actually half.

What you talkin’ ’bout, Skip?!

I speak the gospel’s truth, nutter butter.  If your character’s status says you dodge 50% of the time, then a henchman taking a bat to your skull will be dodged 25% of the time.  And if your avoidance were also at a giga-boned 50%, that means you’re looking at about a 12.5% overall damage reduction, on the queen’s average.  Yes, Invulnerability is laughing at you right now.

BUT!

This is where the expiration date on that egg salad becomes ever more misleading.  That half tax only applies to instant attacks.  You know, the weakling ones that chip at you like a monkey with a screwdriver and a dire hunger for coconut.  Incidentally, you’ll notice that these are the only attacks a wave of 5 henchmen will be using on you.  Hence your quick and embarrassing loss to the Lametown Sluggers.  Now, enter the Villains.  If an attack is charged up for one second, you get your full dodge percentage your admission ticket promised.  If an attack is charged for 2 seconds, you get 1.5x your dodge rating.  If they shoot for the moon and power up for 3 seconds and beyond, you get double the dodge percentage.  There is no cap, mind you, and so double your 50% dodge chance is 100%.  You will always dodge that attack, knocking off your full 50% Avoidance rating.  Not only that, but it stacks with blocks, and you were no doubt blocking that attack he spent so long charging up he might as well have sent you a letter in the mail telling you it was coming.

Result: You laugh at big attacks.  Fear is the mind killer, but you are the boss killer.

So you reluctantly buy into this pyramid scam sounding proposal I present.  How the do-da-day are you to make use of it?  Dexterity.  Gobs and gobs of Dexterity.  Character Focus it, get some gear upgrades, and beg for it on the sidewalk, because it is the single factor in your Lightning Reflex success, and it counts for a lot.  It raises both your Dodge and Avoidance all by its lonesome.  It’s not often a slotted power lets a single characteristic pull double duty, especially to the degree it does here, so take it and run.  If you can get your dodge chance up to the happy 2 out of 3 chance mark (66.7%), that means when you get a 2 second charge aimed your way, it’ll get multiplied by 1.5 and result in 100% dodging.  And dodging instant attacks 1 out of 3 times is no laughing matter either.  Not with that hefty avoidance you’ll be sporting.

Don’t let Lightning Reflexes frustrate you.  Sure, Regeneration is rocking the casaba right out of the gate, but it is at its peak.  The cool kids jump on board, only to watch it whither and weaken as its life goes on.  Lightning Reflexes has nowhere to go but up from the moment it hits your bar, getting better and better as the levels come.  Maybe it’s not really a PvP favorite (you don’t charge much up in PvP) and massive swarms of henchmen aren’t your thing, but when it comes time to take on the big boys, they’ll know who to call.  Probably that Might guy with the chains all over him that keeps whining about how they nerfed Defensive Combo.  But you’ll know who they should’ve called.

What the Flip, Skip?  You’re seem to be a knowledgable, handsome, well-weathered hero who’s knows his way around making a good hero.  Could you please explain characteristics to me?  I just don’t get it.  I have a fire character (obviously), and I don’t know which characteristic adds to my fire damage or what upgrades and talents I should be picking.  Help!  Save this poor bunny!

Hello, Bunny.  Your assessment of my prowess and good looks, I modestly admit, are all true.  How very kind of you to say, given that I am obviously not paying you in order to generate new site content.

Characteristics are something that confuses a lot of newcomers to the Champions Online universe.  You’ll be happy to know that they aren’t really all that complicated, but playing other games causes us to make assumptions of the system that just don’t apply.  The short answer to your question is “you’re probably doing it right without knowing it”.  Let’s start from the basics.

The Characteristics

There are eight characteristics in Champions Online.  That’s a lot compared to some games, but they all do something useful.  This’ll be review for most, but let’s cover that.  If you get it just fine, please skip to the boosch.

• Strength – Strength does a lot of things.  It determines how well you resist being knocked down and around.  It decides how well you knock other people down and around.  It decides how well you break out of things holding you.  It decides how much damage you do with melee attacks like swords and fists.  That last bit is a little confusing, because no other ability adds damage to anything.  That’s right, before we get too far, your fire damage comes from no-where.  Well, that’s not exactly true, but we’ll get there later.
• Dexterity - Dexterity decides your chance of an attack being a critical hit.  Critical hits do more damage.  Damage is how we take down scummy pigs who rob banks and insult the color pink.  How much more damage does it do?  I’m getting there!  You’re impatient, Bunny.
• Constitution – Constitution does one thing and one thing well.  Every point gives you more hit points, making you harder to take down.  How much?  Eh, looks like about +10 HP per point, though I haven’t really tested to see if that goes up or down at different levels.  When you start walking around with several thousand HP, +10 may not seem like much, but it all adds up.
• Intelligence – If you thought Strength had its hands in a lot of cookie jars while honorably stealing many cookies, then Intelligence too is a tentacle monster raiding the honorable cookie factory.  Of its many things, though, the one worth mentioning is that it makes all of your powers cost less to activate.  To a much smaller degree, it makes your powers recharge faster.  The increase is so tiny, I hesitated to even mention it.  But hesitation gets you killed, so out it came!  Lastly, Intelligence aids you in seeing hidden enemies.  Lacking that, being ambushed also helps you find hidden enemies.
• Ego – I’m back, critical hits!  Did you miss me?  That was a rhetorical question, because I know you did.  Ego decides your critical severity.  That is to say the higher your Ego is the more damage you do when you score a critical hit.  Dexterity and Ego go very well together, for this reason.  If ever you’re putting a good amount of points into either, it’s always a good idea to put a few in the other.  Prior to the early October patch of 2009, Dexterity and Ego were inseparably married, and if you didn’t pile on the points in both, the other was largely wasted.  These days, they’re just good friends and talk on a regular basis, but you can neglect one slightly and still benefit.  Ego also helps break out of certain holds.  Kind of like Strength, but for the more ethereal, non-physical types.
• Presence – The main role of Presence, though not what it is most used for, is threat management.  Say what?  Threat?  Yup yup!  The more presence you have, the more likely an enemy will attack one of your party members instead of you.  If you change your role in the build options to Protector, it’ll make you more likely to be attacked instead.  As you can guess, it’s not especially impressive to most people.  Luckily, a lot of abilities designed to buff, heal and support your friends gain benefits from Presence.  It’s definitely a group thing.
• Recovery – Recovery is purely for energy management.  The higher your Recovery, the more your blue endurance bar fills up when you use abilities that do so.  It also sets those little triangle looking dealies on it, which is called Equilibrium.  The higher your Recovery, the more endurance you start a fight with, because whenever you aren’t fighting, it will fill back up to that point.  Recovery is great for starting out fights with powerful attacks before your enemy can fight back.
• Endurance – Endurance is a companion to Recovery (and their often ignored brother, Intelligence) in the energy management game.  Endurance is different in that it simply gives you more maximum endurance in your blue endurance bar.  The great thing is that this doesn’t make it take longer to fill up, like you might think.  In fact, I should probably break energy management down a little better.

BOOSCH!

Energy Mangement – Intelligence/Recovery/Endurance

• Intelligence – Lowers the cost of your powers.  It doesn’t actually give you more energy the way the others do.  Instead, it makes the energy you gain and have worth more by needing less of it.
• Recovery – Raises how much energy you get when you get it and how much you start with before that.  Recovery ensures that you spend as little time gathering energy by making it take less time to fill your bar up.  That’s time you get to spend blastin’ heads.
• Endurance – Raises how much energy you can have.  Since energy builder attacks don’t give a flat amount of energy, but instead a percentage of your bar (a percentage that can be increased with Recovery), then it also means you get more energy per attack with your energy builder.  Huh?  Yup.  Say you have a bar capable of 100 energy and your energy builder refills 10% of it per attack.  Say it, come on.  Good.    It would take 10 attacks to fill it from empty to full, and you’d get 10 energy each attack.  Now assume we took lots of endurance and now we have a bar of 200.  Your energy builder still fills up 10% per attack, but now that gives you 20 energy per attack.  Happiness is.

Focusing on two of these will result in a noticable increase in the amount of energy you can toss about all willey nilley.  But how does one focus?  With…

Characteristic Focuses… or, um, Foci

When you first get out of planet tutorial and into your first real adventure, you’ll be about level 5ish, and ready to pick your first Character Focus.  You get another at level 13 before you go on to Millenium City as well.  What are these?  Really really big bonuses, that’s what they are.  At first, you’ll get about a +12 or +13 to your chosen characteristic.  This number will quickly go up to +20 and beyond as you gain levels.  This is the thing(s) your character improves upon as levels go by without you even needing to equip a single upgrade.  They are what make you SUPER!  And that is not all, oh no madam.  Going back to the earlier question.  What was it?

… I don’t know which characteristic adds to my fire damage …

This!  The answer is “whatever you pick”.  Yes, Strength adds to melee damage, but that’s just a happy bonus for dealing with chasing down your victims and beating them with a personal touch.  But if that same hulking brute chose Presence as his Characteristic Focus, then he would gain bonus damage to all of his attacks just because he’s so personable, and then also get a Strength bonus just to melee.  If he took Strength as his focus, he would gain a bonus for being really strong to all of his powers, then another strength-based bonus to his melee.  Double Trouble!  If you hover over your characteristic in your character’s status screen, you’ll see a bonus that says something to the effect of “+XX% all damage strength”.  If that number is 30% or more, you’ve got a good amount of whatever your focus is.  Past 30% takes a lot of points to see a benefit, and you could be spending those points on more of whatever else you’re not doing.  It’s called a “soft cap” because it’s essentially the limit, but you can go past it if you really try.  It’s chill like that.  It’s also the source of much CO forum rage.  Forum goers are not so chill.  Also, note that what it takes to reach said soft cap goes up every level.  So my damage goes down when I level up?  No, the extra damage you get just for being higher level counters the fact that your bonus is going down.  You’ll still want to head back towards that 30% when it’s convenient, though.

What was that about a Strength melee bonus?

If you have a high Strength, you can get up to 20% more damage on to your melee damage.  How much does that take?  There’s math and formulas and such, and that’s always changing, so I don’t recommend caring.  Right now, if you dedicated yourself to getting Strength as much as possible in your equippable upgrades, you’ll have roughly enough to hit 20% without getting your bonuses from anywhere else.  If you chose Strength as your Character Focus, you’ll be hard pressed not to get the full bonus.

Innate Talents Are Not A Focus

When you first make your hero, you pick what the game calls an “Innate Talent”.  If you pick a preset framework, it is chosen for you.  If you picked the fire preset, you got the Incandescent talent, which gave you +12 to Presence and Recovery and +5 to everything else.  This doesn’t mean you have to pick these as your focus choices.  It’s nice when your Innate and Focus match, but where as your Characteristic Focus improves over time, your Innate Talent will always just be that bonus that got you started.  There are also combinations you may want to try that aren’t available as Innate Talents, and you shouldn’t totally ignore those ideas just because you can’t get +12 in both.  Just as an example, focusing in Constitution and Presence makes for a durable support character that can both heal and survive extreme punishment.

So, if fire scales with whatever focus you choose, why does the framework suggest Presence and Recovery?  That would be…

Scaling Powers

In your fire powerset, you have a power called Fiery Form.  It is your slotted ability, and it’s great.  You catch on fire and do tons of damage and hurt anyone who goes near you and it is honorable and awesome.  It is also a scaling power.  The higher your Presence, the more bonus damage you get in Fiery Form.  The higher your Recovery, the better the elemental resistance bonus it gives you.  Is there anything else amidst the fire powers that cares?  Nope.  Just Fiery Form.  But, Fiery Form is a good power to have if you’re fire-based, and if you want to improve it, you focus in those two.  In fact, in most sets, the recommended characteristics are only linked to their one slotted power.  That’s the case with Electric, Fire, Ice, Force, Shadow, Supernatural, and many others.  Just one power that benefits.

Support-oriented sets are more dependant, and that’s on Presence.  That is probably because Presence is otherwise pretty lame.  All of Sorcery’s auras, many of their circles, and their healing all seem to benefit from it.  Telepathy, with its many heals, falls in the same category.  In the case of these, the scaling is really noticable.  Presence really adds a lot to healing and buffs.  It’s hard to ignore.  They’re also the abilities that often forget to tell you in their description to stock up on the Presence.  That’s why I’m telling you now.  Educate.

Equiping Upgrades

Wew, this is going long, but I’m almost there!  The tutorial is in the home stretch.  I want to point out something about the upgrades you equip that is worth considering when you’re planning your hero.  Your upgrades are separated into three groups: Offensive, Defensive, and Utility.  In each group, you can equip two secondary upgrades and one primary upgrade.  Secondary upgrades have smaller bonuses, but you can get a wide variety of  them.  Primary upgrades give fairly large bonuses or special powers and attacks that can be activated by pressing their associated button (default: 8, 9 and 0).  The large bonuses provided by the primary upgrades can be a great way to raise your focus, or to augment your ability with complimentary characteristics.  Example: You’ve focused in Endurance and Ego as one very sexy Force based blogger.  Because Ego adds to the damage of your critical hits, equipping a Primary Offense with a large bonus to Dexterity can greatly improve your critical hit chance, making you all the sexier.

Knowing where these large bonuses come from can be really helpful in planning, so here goes:

• Primary Offensive – Strength, Dexterity, Recovery
• Primary Defensive - Constitution, Presence
• Primary Utility – Intelligence, Ego, Endurance

You can get items with more than one bonus, though they won’t be as high.  Example Again: Our Constitution and Presence character idea will probably go for Primary Defensives with both characteristics, where as most characters will want the high-HP offering of a Primary Defensive with only Constitution.  Con/Pre Man will have to make up the difference with secondary upgrades.

Oh My GROND, that took way too long.  Hopefully, Bunny, you now know everything you ever needed to know about your hero’s characteristics.  And I mean everything.  Now go forth and fight for honor and awesome!

]]> http://skipcocoa.net/2009/10/skip-cocoa-starts/feed/ 0